Martyrdom Disease

As Lech Kaczyński was buried on Wawel Hill today (in the tombs with Poland's greatest heroes, Kings, and patriots) a certain era has ended. Firstly, Mr.Kaczyński is now regarded as a "saint", and secondly, he has become (instantly in the moment of his death) a great hero of the Polish People. You can see these crazy beliefs all around in Poland; my homeland is sadly very susceptible to the syndrome of the cult of personality. Now, Lech Kaczyński, as I wrote earlier, was a good man, but certainly NOT a good president. He singed he dreaded Lisbon Treaty and thus sentenced Poland to the great European "Anschluss". Poland as a country pretty much no longer exists (not as a sovereign state anyway) thanks to President Kaczyński. There is absolutely nothing a good Pole ought to be thanking that man for. For some reason, however, whenever this gets mentioned other Polish people just tend to accuse the speaker of being such a horrible person he deserves a life-time in jail (again this is a symptom of the cult of personality growing around Kaczyński for the simple reason he died while "on duty"). This applies to a lesser degree also to other people who dies in the Smolensk airplane crash. I cannot help to draw a parallel here with US history. There are two US Presidents who I consider absolutely horrendous, not to use the word evil who are subject to the same treatment as President Kaczyński. One is Abraham Lincoln and the other J.F.Kennedy. Both of these men were plain nuts (Lincoln was literally crazy; he took large doses of mercury-based anti-depressants throughout his life). Lincoln slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Americans (including civilians in Nazi-like tactics) in the bloody War to Prevent Southern Independence. JFK was a socialist and warmonger who, without provocation or cause, invaded Vietnam and started the bloody war there. However neither of these men can be touched so to speak, their reputation is thought to be untarnished by the average American. Why? Not least because they died while "on duty", both assassinated...

O tempora, o mores! How can we, rational human beings, ever be this stupid?